Critique of an Article - Organizational Development and Change Essay

Critique of an Article - Organizational Development and Change - Essay Example The change process at ABA trading company, operating in Germany have been described in three steps including change initiative, change implementation process and sustainable change process. The organization has passed through the change in strategy, organizational culture, management, and leadership and employee orientation. Before explaining the process of change, understanding why ABA Company felt the need to bring the change is important. Actually, as a strategic response to increasing competition, ABA Company decided to go international. The organization was restructured into three divisions and the administrative service was decentralized. Instead of just only restructuring, the organizational change of ABA appeared to be a complete integrated process, in which along with structural change, change in strategy, culture etc. were also introduced. Various companies think short term and ignore the link between restructuring and strategy, however, for restructuring to be successful, long-term strategy should be linked to organizational restructuring. Like various other organizations, restructuring and downsizing poses great threats for the organization because the level of trust, commitment and morale of the employees may go down. Same thing happened in this case, therefore, to reduce the negative impact of the change process; the organization felt the need to analyze the behavior and attitude of people towards this change. First it was observed that before the change process, the culture of company was paternal and supportive. The leadership was caring and highly relational psychological contracts used to exist between organization and its members. The commitment was brought by job security and lifelong employment. Bill felt the need to support the change process, instead of just informing the employees about bringing the change and for a continuous observation and evaluation of organizational members; a team of researchers was hired. The researchers of

International Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

International Management - Essay Example Although ethnically diverse teams play a critical role in the success of companies due to the flexibility, receptiveness, and resource utilization that are expected of them (Marquardt and Horvath 2001), the management of cultural differences and conflict has become a challenge for many international organization. Diversity in culture can bring about misunderstanding, adverse relationships, and weak performance, thus the need to effectively manage geographic distances, facilitate control and coordination matters, establish strong communication, and maintain team consistency. Because of this crucial need, numerous studies, even early research such as that of Hofstede and Trompenaars, have been carried out to explain cultural variations in the working environment and the successful management of these differences among employees. Theories on Cultural Dimensions Through my experience as international director, I have learned about the essential components behind a successful expatriate assignment. Theories of cultural dimensions from well-known researchers such as Hofstede (1980) have been of good use in explaining why people are culturally different from each other. National culture plays a crucial part in understanding a workforce that is ethnically diverse as explained through Hofstede’s (1980) cultural dimensions including power distance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, and long term orientation. Power distance indicates the acceptance and expectation of the society, especially the less powerful individuals, that power can be unequally distributed, thus representing inequality. Anyone who has had experience in international studies can point out that all countries and societies have demonstrated inequality in wealth and power distribution, although some are more unjust than the others. Individualism refers to ho w people are integrated into groups; for instance, individualist societies tend to establish loose relationships among its members and each individual is expected to attend to himself and his family while collectivist ones are likely to stay committed to such relations and demonstrate unwavering loyalty to each other. Masculinity indicates how gender roles are distributed; men’s values significantly differ from those of the women such as in terms of assertiveness, competitiveness, compassion, and modesty. The index for uncertainty avoidance suggests how societies can tolerate and accept ambiguity, or whether or not they can find comfort in uncertain and unplanned situations. Unstructured circumstances are often different from the normal conditions and cultures that aim to avoid uncertainty place their efforts in minimizing the likelihood of ambiguous situations through the implementation of strict rules and regulations to ensure control over all. On the other hand, cultures t hat are accepting of uncertainty are